Crime and punishment: psychology and book bans

UK justice minister Chris Grayling has been roundly criticised for a blanket ban on prisoners being sent books. Why would anyone do this? There are many likely psychological reasons behind such a punishment, but also evidence to suggests it’s pointless

The suddenness of it does suggest that not a lot of thought has gone into this. Perhaps the policy is the result of some other factors? Is there a rumour going round that paper and ink are crucial ingredients in a type of moonshine? Has there been a dramatic rise in lethal paper-cuts in prisons? Maybe the policy was meant be the somewhat-obvious but well-meant “under no circumstances should prisoners receive bombs”, but an overzealous autocorrect caught the last word, and they decided to press ahead without proofreading?

But the general consensus seems that this move is designed to punish prisoners purely to show potential voters that the government is tough on crime. But if you look into the science and psychology behind such things, it actually makes little sense.

Positive punishment, counterintuitively, is when an unpleasant stimulus is applied following an undesirable behaviour. Spanking a child for being naughty, putting someone in jail for a crime, these would be positive punishments. Negative punishments are when something nice is removed in response to an undesirable behaviour. The removal of access to books would be a good example of this (unless prisoners are being constantly sent the works of Dan Brown or Stephenie Meyer, in which case it could be seen as a reward).

At this point you might be asking yourself “what the hell has this got to do with banning books?” Which is sort of the point. What has a sudden and blanket banning of books got to do with how punishment and deterrence actually work? Not a great deal. Unless every prisoner was beating someone with a pillowcase full of paperbacks at the moment the ban came into effect, it seems essentially random.

If there’s no specific event associated with the punishment, other associations will be made. In this case, prisoners can no longer have books, so they’re being punished for what they do with books, so “reading and learning”. Call me a woolly liberal, but “sitting quietly and reading about stuff” is the sort of behaviour I’d want to encourage in convicts, not punish. The assertion that this move is based on a “new regime of rewards and punishments” does nothing to reduce concerns; the very introduction of the policy in this manner shows that those responsible really don’t have any idea how such things actually work.

In fairness, this piece has thus far focused on more fundamental psychological processes underpinning punishment, and humans are significantly more complex than that. For example, there are philosophical and cognitive differences between punishment, justice, revenge etc. Many would argue that punishment needs to be delivered by the relevant authority in order to count as such.

It’s the public perception of such things, rather than the scientific rationale, which seems to be behind the book ban. By and large, people care about justice (some more than others) and want to see those who break the rules deterred from doing so. Arguments over whether prisoners should be punished or rehabilitated have been around forever, but there is still a substantial chunk of the population who want to see prisoners suffer. There are many possible reasons for this, one of which is the just-world hypothesis (in short, people believe the world is fair, so those in unpleasant situations must somehow deserve it). Prisoners, people who are “bad”, having things like books when they should be being punished is unfair (no matter how useful to society).

People who believe this are likely to have an authoritarian personality. Such people are very likely to hold right-wing views. So if you’re a right-wing government, publicly sticking the boot in to prisoners is a potential vote-winner, so who cares if there’s any sense behind it?